Tag Archives: life

I want to share some important thoughts from a book from Viktor E. Frankl. The Finnish name of the book is Tiedostamaton jumala. The original name of the book is Der unbewusste Gott.

There seems to be two versions of this book in English 1) The subconscious god and 2) Man’s search for the ultimate meaning.

Among other things Frankl discusses when a person’s choice of a partner is really the choice of love.

”Id” refers to sexual instinct (I hope I use right translation), ego refers to that something that is ”me” for a person, that ”mystical” I who thinks and feels. Super ego refers to conscience.

Frankl explains that as long as ”id” determines the choice of a partner, the choice is not the choice of love. I think this kind of choice could be described more like choice of lust.

When ego is free from ”id” and makes its own choice, only then the choice is really choice of love when the context is choosing a partner to love. To me this is one of the most important thoughts of the book.

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Sometimes I’ve wondered when in James Bond movies people often complains about 007’s ego, that should it sometimes be 007’s ”id” they should be complaining about… 🙂

It seems that I have forgotten lots of things recently. Luckily I haven’t forgotten anything in oven while making food… Even in this short blog post I had to use dictionary a lot.. 🙂

Recently I started to think, that have I forgotten what kind of person is a strong person. Sometimes in my experience nowadays we live somehow in a heartless weak world. Is it then easy to be strong here? No.

One good characteristic of a strong person is balance in a wide sense. For instance, one characteristic of strength is restrain, what represents balanced person capable of sensible consideration and judgement. A strong person doesn’t easily get upset or angry; one should remember, that hate blinds and makes eventually weak. The ”power” of hatred is only a delusion.

To grow up a strong person is hard and to keep oneself strong is hard; in practice one must have courage to be weak and face the truth: One must face oneself, own weaknesses and win them in order to grow a strong person.

One problem may be blindness to own weaknesses; one may believe that something that in fact represents weakness, represents strength.

If one doesn’t have courage to face oneself — the whole truth about oneself — one doesn’t really have courage to face anyone else either in a true way; one doesn’t really see other people. This may cause one to harden oneself and become ”tough”, what in practice means cowardice. At least eventually.

How could love in this case be strong, which represents real strength. True strength.

We all have inner demons called hate and fear among others, that we must conquer. Perhaps someday we will see a world without wars, when everyone has defeated their own inner demons, particularly fears and hatred.

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In big heart there is room enough to pain too, so that pain or fears can’t suffocate the starting sparks of love. Eventually love will melt all the pain when it gets its chance. Perhaps I’m only dreaming… Though, I hope not.

This post is part of what I’ve written in a cafeteria when I was too alone and lonely in 2007…

Is my loneliness my “friend”? Why it doesn’t want to let go of me? Would it be alone then? Does loneliness need someone in order it wouldn’t be alone? Would loneliness die, if I wouldn’t be alone? Is loneliness my only friend who wants, that our “friendship” doesn’t cease to be?

Is loneliness like evil spirit that tries to encapsulate an individual inside itself? Furthermore, is it so, that loneliness can’t take being alone itself; and because of that, it forces someone to be its “friend” and therefore lonely people does exist? Is loneliness afraid of loneliness itself? If so, does it try to put its own fears to its victim?

If the victim is not afraid of loneliness, will loneliness die as useless? Does loneliness need the fear of loneliness? What if that fear becomes useless?

Is being lonely substantially different thing that being afraid that one is lonely? Yes.

Does loneliness try to scare people? From what does loneliness find its purpose to live? From the loneliness of other people? What can take away the purpose of loneliness? Is it enough that one is not afraid of loneliness? Will loneliness begin to be afraid of loneliness itself then?

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Will the heart of the loneliness be broken, if no-one doesn’t want to be alone and lonely? Is loneliness thenitself alone and lonely? Is loneliness then afraid of itself? If so, loneliness can’t eventually exist; is that like lonelinesshad found itself?

If so, it is afraid that it will be left alone for good and that it is deserted, even though hardly no-one ever wanted or liked it.

Its own fear teaches to it then, that it is evil. Friendship will burn it into non-existent.

When I first posted to this blog my first short thoughts about the meaning of the life, I had completely forgotten, that in 1994 I had first read Viktor E. Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, original name Ein Psycholge erlebt das Konzentrationslager (some kind of direct translation into English could be ”A Psychologist experiences a concentration camp”. The Finnish translation to the book is Ihmisyyden rajalla. Direct translation to this in English is On the border of humanity.

Why this book is so important to me is, that my so called high school (lukio) years were pure hell to me… My math teacher was sure that I would fail the 6 hours examination on math and I can’t blame him: Because of the circumstances while I was at high school, I didn’t at first pass some of the math courses. At lukio in Finland the grades are from 4 to 10 in all the courses. I got some 4s in math and had to try again to get at least 5 to pass the course. It was a miracle that the average of my math grades eventually was even 6 that is really weak grade.

From the final 6 hours exam that is the same (though in math there is more advanced line compared to the other to choose from) for every high school students in Finland, I got eventually cum laude approbatur as grade. At the time the grades for this exam were improbatur (failed), approbatur, lubenter approbatur, cum laude approbatur, magna cumlaude approbatur and laudatur. Nowadays there is eximia magna cum laude approbatur between magna and laudatur.

But I didn’t do the final exam that consists of many days of 6 hours exams with the other students. With my school’s principal I had agreed that I will do the whole exam apart from the other students. This was how in my high school years I did eventually also all the courses after the first year.

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After I had read many Viktor E. Frankl’s books, it was after two years when I took the one chance to try to raise my math grades: I got 9 for the 11 math courses, laudatur for the final exam. I was on the ”advanced mathematics” courses at high school. Though compared to university math those high school courses are child play.

I compared often my high school years to Frankl’s experiences. Of course his experiences were whole lot more extreme: He couldn’t be sure if he sees the next morning – or hour… Though, later on my life seeing the next morning hasn’t been very certain…

To emphasize Frankl’s books importance, they made me understand how to live. One point is: No matter how terrible the circumstances in one’s life are, one should strive to see some meaning to live and get even further in life. The worst case that Frankl describes for a human is, that one has only one’s existence. This is where one should try to find meaning to one’s existence, after that one can begin to find meanings to one’s life.

I really should get back to the ideas of meaning of life. As Frankl’s says, he understood, that the highest goal in one’s life is love. But as to meaning of life, Frankl has written that life (some other person) should ask that from oneself; it’s hard to really find the meaning of life by oneself. Even if one can as a word or some kind of concept see love as the primary meaning of life, depending on the circumstances it may be hard to find the right path directly.

One thing that I’ve said to myself sometimes is: Life must be experienced, it’s not be watched on the TV. Only by living, one can learn how to live and get real experiences from which to learn.

This month I decided to translate into English some of my Google+ page’s Philosophy collection’s thoughts written in Finnish. Some thoughts are quite hard to translate, since direct translation often changes the meaning too much. With an alternate choice of words there may be a slight difference in the meaning, but it is often more close to the original meaning of the thought than the direct translation.

In the Finnish language there are no prepositions or articles for any words, all the words have different forms depending on the context.

The nouns have most forms. The amount of these forms has varied in time. Nowadays there are 14 forms for one word with 15 grammatical cases. The accusative grammatical case always appears in the same form than some other grammatical case of the same word. In the dialects there exists at least one grammatical case, that doesn’t exist in the written standard language.

Furthermore, in practice every language culture as such is slightly different, so that the direct translations are not often sensible. One must choose words, that most closely match the original meaning. In addition, every language culture lives its own life, varying and changing in time…

Finally to the translated thoughts…

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1. A thought, I came up at one night, that can be interpreted in multiple ways: The nature doesn’t betray. That’s way it should be respected.

[To the word ‘betray’ one online dictionary gives 26 alternatives to the original Finnish word ‘pettää’ that is in form ‘petä’ (Luonto ei petä) in the original Google+ post.]

2. Bad help can be more harmful, than helping not at all. – Can help in those cases (always) really be considered as help?

3. The philosophy of the lyrics in the love songs: The lyrics should not be defining; otherwise the freedom and full potential of love is missing.

4. My childhood’s (I was 12 years old) pondering at the middle of the elementary school’s class immersed in my own thoughts: If anyone could make the choice between good and evil, why would anyone choose evil?

5. The next thought is pondering of a Finnish saying (though, this saying may be somewhat widespread, I don’t know where it may originally come from), that could be translated as follows: ”The most important thing isn’t the goal, but the journey.”

Sometimes these kinds of old sayings may have arisen from blunders: For example there may have been people on their journey to somewhere, but they have got lost. Then someone may have said to relieve the situation this saying, that has left its mark in life/language.

If we assume, that the mentioned saying has arisen from some blunder, it may not be wise to take the saying as an actual guideline — particularly if in the assumed blundering the goal that may have been set, had never been reached. On the other hand, the saying can be used in a reasonable way too: If, for example, some journey has ended up by getting lost, what could be better way to cheer up each other, than to say: ”Well, the goal isn’t so important, but the journey.” To add some humor from the popular Finnish TV comedy series ”Kummeli”: ”Tomorrow again.” 🙂

6. [I had shortened the next one a bit, because of different kind of humor that the Finnish comedians often make (at least used to make) compared to many others.]

Humor is a difficult field. For example everyone can (probably) clown around, but it isn’t always humor neither it can be considered as comedy always. To succeed for example in sketch comedy the actors and/or actresses must enter into one’s role in the way, the viewers can experience the comedy so that it doesn’t look like acting; it is particularly bad case, if the viewers notice, that the actors and/or actresses laugh to their own jokes as they are acting.

In addition, from the point of view of morale it’s not good, if any humor has been made by someone else’s expense (from real life). The mentioned may, for example, cause different kinds of negative phenomena, for example discrimination of some people.

The test of mental health is, that can the viewer make a difference between the fact and the fiction.

7. Living the life in a humble way, without expecting or asking anything from life, life can reward one and give something ”back”; when it’s its time, life knows it. This present or gift of life is something one may not despise nor can one be proud of; otherwise life may take more than it gives, take even more, than it has ever given.

8. Sometimes being still, by stopping everything, giving oneself time for a ”moment”, doing nothing, being ”loose” from everything, can take one forwards in life more than an express train – and faster.

9. In time a lie becomes unbearable in truth.

A lie is like a cancer, that tries to take over its host, in the end to kill the host, that is, hiding the truth by blinding and by leading its host into darkness. Finally the cloak, that the lie represents, falls into impossible and truth gets its place; for when the darkness of a lie is big enough, the lie is also a lie to itself, so that the lie is cancer to itself too, exhausting itself; so the lie dies.

10. According to the assumption/supposition as the Big Bang happened, also the laws of the nature were originated. According to the assumption/supposition that, what we call life, is evolutionary phenomenon, in practice in many sense ”dynamic”.

Now, can one for certain assume, that in the field of physics the study of the laws of the nature are in life’s varied and dynamic evolution in certain ”static”, that is, always the same after they have first been discovered and modeled ”for the first time” in so called sensible accuracy?

What if the chaos theory and the fact that it is utilized in many fields of sciences, reflects in fact in addition the dynamical nature of the laws of the nature themselves too, somehow?

If the laws of the nature are in fact somehow ”dynamic” besides life itself, can ”the theory/theories of everything” be forgotten, if it/them doesn’t/don’t ”live in the spirit of the time”.

The previous thought of mine is really only a poetic question and speculation…

There are some more thoughts on my Google+ page that are both in Finnish and in English and there are more to come…

The world we live in, is somewhat imperfect and there are many kinds of often invisible walls, obstacles. In addition, to keep one in love is hard, after one believes, one has found love.

But what has one in fact found? Is love the partner, one has found? Or is this love person him/herself, who experiences loving his/her partner? In both of these views can be something imperfect, yet something right.

One substantial failing in these views can be kind of missing symbiosis of love, that at best in coaction would grow love of the both, particularly both of the partners could feel and experience that one is loved by the other.

One fundamental matter is, that it is important, that both of the partners are mentally as much as possible present, when they’re together. This way they can touch each other also mentally, at best all the time.

It is very significant, that the both are able to achieve inner harmony in love, that is the source to everything, they do. In which case for example doing the dishes is not just housework, but when it is done from love, the housework gives something back. Even doing the dishes can thus grow the love of the both, when one doesn’t do the dishes just for oneself, on the other hand not just for the partner, but does the work for both from love for the shared path.

Now doing the dishes (and everything else the partners do) grows the love of the both and the home of the partners is protected by the common love of the partners with kind of harmonic, yet complex, form of love, which makes the home, even if it were as such somewhat modest, a pleasant place to live in.

At the beginning of this post, I brought forth the imperfectness of this world. Can love be measured? If it can be, does it have some maximum value, from which it can’t grow anymore?

One — on the other hand simple, yet complex — point of view of mine is, that in this world living in love, in addition to make this love grow, is ”dynamic” yet harmonic metaphor of the sine wave.

It kind of seems, that in this life, one can’t go only to one direction, at least it is difficult. But when we take a look at the sine wave, we notice, that it goes harmonically up and down, but the direction is always forwards without any limit (as seen in the set of real numbers, in the set R). Aforesaid pointing at the sine wave I was after, is substantially the metaphor of living in love and how to make it grow.

Now it is important, that my point in sine wave metaphor is not the ”downhills” and ”uphills” of life as such, but the fact, that it seems, that in this world there is some kind of limit to love. In the sine wave metaphor I’m after the idea, that as the partners grow their love to each other, in their way the direction is all the time forwards and in their way forwards in life being up and down can mean at best something else than misfortune.

It can be about the strange fact, that sometimes the both partners in a way go inside misery (the bottom of the sine wave), but instead of being in misery in the bottom of life, life can be lived in love remembering, what is important and at the same time the partners are in fact growing their love (at the bottom of the “sine wave”).

Now, when the partners next time ”achieve the top of the sine wave”, love is more varied than before. It is important to notice, that the question is there now more love in a measurable way, is not necessarily meaningful. Better view to love now is, that it has taken new forms and is more varied than before. In other words: More understanding in love.

In the lyrics of the video below, you can hear “Can love be measured by the hours in a day”…

Further reading:

The inspiration to this blog post came from my girlfriend, the Morning Sun; without her this post would not have become into existence.